2005-05-30: The Silence of the Langford

Dave Langford wins a Hugo award yearly, and yet if you're not familiar with
science fiction fandom (as opposed to just being a fan), you may never have
heard of him. That's because most of those Hugos, with the exception of a
short fiction win, are for various forms of fan writing. Langford writes
reviews, critical essays, humorous essays, fannish news, and random
blatherings, as well as the occasional short fiction, scattered across
dozens of different publications and convention appearances. You can find
quite a bit of it on his web site, or
even better, you can pick up The Silence of the Langford from
NESFA Press, support a fan-driven small
press that has done invaluable work for the SF community, and get a
collection of some of the best of Langford's writing.

This collection is mostly essays and speeches, with a smattering of
reviews, a few representative samples from Langford's fanzine
Ansible, and three short stories. It is not a review collection
(see The Complete Critical Assembly for that); it is, instead, a
collection of more general writing about SF, sprinkled with writing about a
few other topics.

The opening essay is "The Dragonhiker's Guide to Battlefield Convenant at
Dune's Edge: Odyssey Two," a brilliantly funny convention speech that fires
both barrels at some of the more egregiously bad bits of science fiction,
succeeding so well that I was laughing out-loud at a critical annihilation
of a book I personally rather liked. This is also the speech in which
Langford spells out exactly how he feels about L. Ron Hubbard's
Battlefield Earth, and it's one of the best rants I've had the
pleasure to read.

The beginning of the collection is full of gems like this, from "Trillion
Year Sneer" (more snarking at bad SF writing), to a great collection of
short articles for an old computer magazine, to a few columns about mystery
novels that gave me a new appreciation for analysis of the genre. Although
I liked the essays aimed directly at analyzing writing the best, the topic
almost doesn't matter; Langford can make me laugh out-loud while digressing
on almost any subject, hiding wonderful turns of phrase and a delight in
language in the middle of the most prosaic of essays. This collection is
best read a few essays at a time, rather than in one long sitting, so as to
not get overwhelmed and lose the effect.

Sadly, it is a bit front-loaded, and the end of the collection (including
the short stories) aren't as strong. (Although I did find "Inside
Outside," the last essay of the collection, one of the most interesting.)
The stories here are decent idea-driven ones, but they don't rise above the
average SF story the way that his essays rise above the average SF essay,
and frankly the excerpts from Ansible giving news of years long
past, while understandable inclusions from the perspective of a sample of
his work, are almost filler (falling short of that solely because
Langford's writing style is always entertaining).

Still, even if some of this could be skipped, you owe it to yourself to
read Langford's writing if you're an SF fan. You do need to be reasonably
well-versed in SF, and it helps to know something of SF fandom and the
nature of SF conventions, so this book isn't for everyone. It also helps
to have read the books that he mentions. If you are in the right target
audience, though, highly recommended.

Here are the capsule reviews of the short stories:

"The Arts of the Enemy": This isn't a story in the traditional
sense, but rather a monologue told in the second person singular, one of
those perspectives that only works in short stories and there only rarely.
It's from the perspective of a villain to someone in his power, the
standard post-capture bragging rant of the comic-book mastermind, except
with far less feeling that the hero is going to escape. An interesting
idea, and a much more intelligent villain than the usual variety, but not
something that's likely to stick in my memory. (6)

"Leaks": A paranormal with an apparently worthless ability manages
to find a unique application for it in the nick of time. Mostly a puzzle
story, although there are some nice jabs at atomic research here. (Nothing
as good as the essay "The Leaky Establishment: The Final Drips" earlier in
the collection, though.) An average enough problem story in the
semi-superhero genre, marred by some descriptions that I didn't really want
to have read. (6)

"If Looks Could Kill": Definitely the best story of the three,
this is a detective story with a paranormal twist. Someone is murdering
people with the evil eye, openly, and yet there is no way that the murderer
could apparently have done the deed. Not a locked room mystery, in that
the twist the story relies on introduces new facts, but satisfying enough,
with an amusing ending. (7)

2005-05-30: Baycon haul

This ended up being, unusually for me, mostly an art-buying con, and I'm
going home with more fine art than I think I've ever purchased before in my
life. I even picked up one thing at auction! But still, there was book
buying, as there always was.

As is typical for me at Baycon, I did some shopping from my list but also
went freely off of it, picking up things that I just noticed or looked
interesting or had interesting covers.

I'm probably going to regret buying the Carey, since it's part one of two
and the second one isn't out yet, but now that I own it, I won't be able to
refrain from reading it. It was half-off, though.

Lots of fill-in of award winners I didn't yet own, but amazingly enough,
only one per award for several different awards. One World Fantasy, one
BSFA, one Philip K. Dick, one Tiptree, and one Mythopoetic.

I'm still missing the second half of The Mirror of Her Dreams, and
am not sure I want to start that without having both parts. The Mary
Stewart were only $1 a piece, so I figured I'd fill in the rest of the
series before I start reading it. I'm still missing one of the Viriconium
books as well. I bought the Kim Harrison book purely because of the cover;
we'll see how bad of an idea that was.